EPO Changes PACE from 1 January 2016

8 December 2015

The EPO has recently issued a notice concerning the accelerated prosecution procedure - PACE (EPO notice can be found here). There are some important modifications that will come into force from 1 January 2016. One key difference is that it will now be possible to request PACE only once during the search procedure and only once during the examination procedure. This means that for any applications where PACE has previously been requested and the application has subsequently dropped out of PACE, and where PACE is still required, it is advisable to file a PACE request before the new procedure comes into force on 1 January 2016.